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Speaking to OXM at Microsoft's Xbox One reveal last month, Xbox product planning boss Albert Penello has downplayed technical comparisons between Xbox One and PS4, arguing that hardware analysis is "meaningless" when "our games and experiences are going to be every bit as good as, if not better" than those you'll find on competing consoles.

Asked whether he was cautious of comparisons with PS4 by our editor Jon Hicks, Penello pointed out that few players really buy consoles for the specs alone. "The problem is that Sony decided to go out and publish a bunch of numbers, which are in some ways meaningless," he told us. "Because this isn't like 1990, when it was 16-bit versus 32-bit.

"As a matter of fact," he continued, "they actually go out and they talk about how proud they are about their off-the-shelf parts. Our guys'll say, we touched every single component in the box and everything there is tweaked for optimum performance."

"For me, I'd rather not even have the conversation, because it's not going to matter," Penello went on. "The box is going to be awesome. The games are going to be awesome. I heard this exact same argument last generation and it's a pointless argument, because people are debating things which they don't know about. They're not [head silicon engineer] Nick Baker or [corporate vice president of IEB hardware Todd Holmdahl], and I'm not [lead PS4 architect] Mark Cerny, so why are we having this discussion?"

Penello feels consumers will pick a console for the games it offers, rather than for its capabilities on paper. "Here's what you care about," he said. "You bought a system to play great games and have great experiences. I feel like our games and experiences are going to be every bit as good, if not better, technically - on top of all the magic we're going to add with the instant switching, and the power of the cloud.

"So the whole numbers game - yeah, I've been following it online and it's like, we tried having that argument last time. Do I want to talk about HDMI 1.3 or 1.4, it's like 'argh!' It doesn't matter. Did you see Call of Duty, it looks f**king awesome! It's going to be great, you know. So we're just saying, it's not worth the debate."

The new Xbox console's memory performance has been hugely underestimated, according to a new Digital Foundry report. For more on the specs - and what game developers could do with them - read our gigantic round-up of Xbox One details.

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The biggest thing about PS4 that is exciting to me is how they simplified everything stating that develop time should be reduced back to PS1 complexity of couple months as opposed to PS3 6-12 months. Point being, mor etime spent on creativity, less time spent on just figuring out the architecture, which I hope leads to better and more games.

veritaz said:Did anyone else notice he pretty much called consumers dumb by saying I don't want to talk about specs call of duty is f**king awesome.

Not really. He just said most consumers don't care about specs. They just want games. He's spot on. For more hardcore gamers specs might matter but that isn't the majority of gamers. And if specs really matter then PC is the way to go.

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Well I hope they are serious about this game issue and then start to build or buy more development studios like Sony did to fill out their portfolio. To say its about the games and then completely ignore Sony's huge first party studio portfolio is pretty ignorant.

It would be nice to see Microsoft invest some of their money into more 1st party games. They have the money and they claim its about the games, well put your money where your mouth is and make my Xbox One preorder really worth it

They can start with a proper MechWarrior game, that doesn't use Kinect